GPIO Pin Muxing

I've received a couple new Robovero boards to try out (thanks Gordon). These ones are R3902, unfortunately they still have the same problem with L3 getting in the way of a capacitor on the newer Overo boards but that's supposed to be fixed in R4000. However, they made a couple of changes to the circuitry. One change was the addition of power control over the IMU using one of the Robovero's GPIO pins. Kind of makes sense, lets you power up/down the IMU at will, nice change, easily implemented. The other change was adding a reset circuit to the Overo's GPIO70 pin.

Last modified Tue, 13 Aug, 2013 at 11:00

Full Calibration Procedure

Now that I'm using my new Robovero/Mikrokopter interface board, I figured it was about time that I recalibrated the accelerometer and compass to reflect the new orientation.  When I started the recalibration procedure I realized that I never really documented my calibration in the first place.  Here's how I did it this time:Accelerometer (roll/pitch)

Last modified Sun, 7 Jul, 2013 at 13:57

I2C Woes

Well after rebuilding my controller build for the Mikrokopter with the new PCB I designed I found out yesterday there was a problem.

Last modified Wed, 22 May, 2013 at 13:16

Updating Overo Kernel for Multicast Data

Now that I've got my attittude EKF running on the Robovero, it's time to get some position estimates as well. To do that I need to have position measurements. While indoors I'll be using our NaturalPoint OptiTrack system as a pseudo GPS measurement. I already had the Simulink block ready to go so adding that in shouldn't have been a problem. However, when I tried to run the code I was never able to receive any information from the OptiTrack system even though my Windows machine could no problem.

Last modified Sun, 14 Apr, 2013 at 14:52

Compass Calibration and Attitude EKF

After putting it off for a while I finally got around to calibrating the compass on the Robovero. Basically what this does is measure the effects of hard iron (metal objects around the compass), soft iron (circuit effects) and misalignment between the chip axis and the Robovero body axis. To my surprise the compass wasn't too bad, basically wanding around the compass should give a unit sphere centered at 0. It was close but after applying the calibration procedure given in LSM303DLH-compass-app-note.pdf, I came out with the following compass measurements.

Last modified Wed, 27 Mar, 2013 at 18:21

Custom PCB Working ... Modifying LPC1769 Robovero Code

Well I got my first custom PCB from AdvancedCircuits yesterday. I populated the board and everything seems to be working. I had to remove some solder-mask and cut some traces to add in some resistors I forgot to add but I knew that was coming. It wasn't too hard and things look to be working.

Next up, modify the LPC1769 code on the Robovero to do all the low level hardware interfacing (instead of calling it all from the Overo over "serial"). I got the motor reading/writing working, wasn't a huge step since I could debug it through the Overo first.

Last modified Wed, 20 Feb, 2013 at 20:51

Quadrotor Arrived

Well the first quadrotor has finally arrived.

Last modified Sun, 10 Feb, 2013 at 22:59

Back in Hardware Mode

Updated software to newest build. I rebuilt the MLO(x-load), u-boot, uImage(kernel) and the root file system. One thing I learned the hard way was that when you're updating the u-boot you need to erase the environment variables (nanderase 240000 20000 I think). Otherwise if you are moving to a newer build you might find that it won't boot at all.

Last modified Tue, 5 Jun, 2012 at 10:48

NTP Update

I'd like to keep the date and time on the Overo to be current. Down the line I think I'll be using the date/time to timestamp some stuff. Since it doesn't keep an accurate clock when it's shut down I need to update it when it boots. I imagine later I will setup my own ntp server so that they won't require internet access but for now pool.ntp.org will work fine. To get this running I basically followed the directions given here.

Last modified Tue, 13 Sep, 2011 at 8:36

H.264 RTP Video Streaming

This is one of my end applications of the Overo.  I want to mount this device onto a rover/uav and get real-time streaming, good quality video.  I also didn't want the operation to dominate the CPU.  Ideally my other applications will be able to run along side the video stream.  Therefore, I had to use the DSP.  So once I got it running it was time to stream.

Last modified Sun, 4 Sep, 2011 at 16:41

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